by Kristie Cook
“And Jacquelena and Jeremicah are the leaders of the Seven,” Uri added.
Crickets, again, as we all absorbed this. Then questions started flying.
“Whoa, whoa, whoa,” Melinda finally said, raising her voice over the rest of us. We all quieted. “Like we said, we don’t know what it all means.”
“Since you don’t know much, how do you know we’re them?” I demanded. The others backed me.
“We feel it,” Uri said. He pounded a fist against his chest. “All of the Guardians feel a respect for you at the soul level. We know at our very cores that you are supposed to lead us.”
What the hell was he talking about?
“This makes no sense,” Leni said. “How could nobody remember more? How could we not remember something like this?”
“That’s always the question, isn’t it?” Melinda muttered as she sat back in her chair. “Memories are always wiped. Any recordings are lost. Any time we try so much as to leave clues for ourselves, we don’t remember that we did half the time and can’t make sense of them the other half. It’s as if the universe is against the possibility of us actually knowing everything we need to know.”
“Maybe it is,” Mira said. “Every lifetime, no matter how high in the world echelons we’ve gone, is a chance to grow and learn.”
“We can’t possibly know everything anyway,” Uri added. “Only the Maker knows. We do our best to figure out what we can, but our meager human brains are not capable of understanding everything. It’s a waste of time to try.”
“So what does this mean for us?” Asia asked. “If nobody knows the answers, does it really mean anything at all?”
Theo leaned forward now. “It means when the time comes, you four will be expected to lead. Especially you, Jeric and Leni.”
A prickle ran down my spine. After eight years of being a loner, I hadn’t even figured out how to live in a world with other people. And they expected me to lead? Hell no.
“We wanted to tell you now so you can be prepared,” Uri said. “You won’t be staying here long to guard the Gate. As soon as you’re ready, you should be out in the world, doing missions, helping the Broken and Lost. And if and when crisis hits, you’ll be experienced to handle it.”
“More and more Guardians are talking about you and the Sacred Seven, which is why we thought we better tell you ourselves,” Melinda said. “You were bound to hear it from someone.”
“So … that’s it?” Brock asked. “You drop this bomb in our laps and leave it at that?”
“Well, we’re hoping you remember more,” Mira said. “We’re hoping that as the elite of all the Phoenix, you’ll be able to recall past lives more clearly. That you’ll work on trying to remember more diligently so we can all possibly learn what you know.” She gave me a pointed look. I resisted the urge to flip her off.
“Who are the other three?” Asia asked. “If there are supposed to be seven, where are the others?”
“Good question,” Melinda said. “And it’s most likely there are five others. Five pairs. Because an odd number of individuals wouldn’t make sense when we’re all dyads.”
“Do the names Nathayden and Rebethannah ring any bells?” Uri asked. I began to shake my head, but Leni squeezed my thigh.
“They do sound a tiny bit familiar,” she said.
“Yeah,” Asia agreed, “but it’s really vague. Are we supposed to know them?”
Uri opened his hands, palms up. “Maybe. The Guides said they’d heard about the pair from previous Guides. It seems that you all were close in past lives on Earth. They might be another pair from the Seven.”
“But they’re not here on Earth right now?” Leni asked.
Mira shook her head. “They haven’t been for several lifetimes. At least, not together. We Guides only learn of Guardian souls alighting on Earth when both halves arrive. Our role is to bring the two parts together, so when there is only one half here, we can’t do that. We don’t even know about their existence here unless Guardians on a mission might find them.”
“There’s rumor that since you’re here and the four of you have been Forged that it means something,” Melinda said.
“Like what?” I demanded.
“Like something major with the Gates or the Phoenix,” she said. “They’re only saying that because none of you have been here in nearly a century and now two pairs are. It’s just a rumor, like pretty much everything else. If the Sacred Seven belong here on Earth, then there’s really no reason we should be overly excited that two pairs have returned.”
“But if you could remember something, anything … it’d help us all,” Uri added. “Perhaps help this whole world.”
Shit. No pressure there. Assholes. Did they really think we could just go back to our rooms, flip a switch, and remember everything about all of our past lives? All hundreds or even thousands of them? How the hell did we get put into this position? I mentally laughed at myself. I supposed if I could remember, we’d know how we got to be a part of this Seven, and maybe how to get ourselves out of it. There was one thing I knew for sure—if leading the Phoenix meant putting Leni’s life in danger, I wasn’t doing it.
The Guides and the healers left us with that bomb, as Brock had put it. We all had guard duty soon, so we headed back to our rooms. I sulked the whole way and needed Leni’s soul mixed with mine more than ever.
We’d barely settled into the perfect state when we were called. Our soul rose from our bodies as one, then drifted into two clouds of light. One took form as Leni, curls and curves and all, and the other took my form. Although our souls remained connected, we could move as two separate entities. We left our bodies safely in our bed, our physical arms still encircling each other, and floated through the window and outside, where Brock and Asia waited. Or at least their astral selves did, only misty-light forms, like Leni and me. We flew out over the water.
“How you doing, bro?” Brock asked as our souls dove into the water by the island with the single weeping willow tree that marked the Gate.
Only a few Lakari, what we’d called Shadowmen until we learned better, had been nearby, their black souls floating like dirty mist over the water. Not enough to take us on—our Light would shatter their Darkness easily—but that could change at any time. Thus, our need to guard the Gate below. They wanted in … from somewhere beyond this world.
“Pretty fucked up,” I muttered. Of course, nobody truly spoke. The energy of our thoughts carried to each other like vibrations through our souls.
“Yeah, no shit,” Brock agreed.
“It kind of explains some things,” Leni mused.
“Yeah, like how we feel a connection with each other,” Asia agreed. “Brock and I knew you guys as soon as we saw you. Your souls anyway. We recognized them.”
“That could just be because we’ve spent a lot of lives together,” Leni said. “Unc—I mean, Theo told us how some souls draw to each other over several lifetimes even when they’re not Twin Flames. Some best friends always seem to find each other over and over. And some families have that deep connection, too.”
Something rippled through us with her last words—a mix of hope and sadness.
“Yeah, something like that,” Asia said. “But—”
She was cut off by the Gate suddenly glowing a bright white through the sand. The light rose around us, creating a solid wall, and then a hole began to yawn open.
Leni’s eyes widened along with the hole. “Whoa. What’s going on?”
“Enyxa’s trying to open it!” Brock nearly yelled, and he responded faster than the rest of us, blasting his light toward the Gate to close the gaping hole before any of Enyxa’s Lakari could pass through.
“No,” Leni said, shaking her head. She moved closer to the cylindrical wall of light. “It’s something else.”
&n
bsp; I felt it, too, but how could Leni know it was anything different?
“You don’t have enough experience to know anything,” Brock barked, and I momentarily wanted to punch him for talking to us like that, even if he was right.
“It is different, though,” Asia said. Like Leni, she seemed drawn to the hole that refused to close. It wasn’t black as it usually was the few times I’d seen someone trying to open the Gate from the other side. Colors swirled inside it now, hypnotizing, like the walls in the Space Between the last time we were there.
“Stay back!” I said as Leni moved even closer, tugging at my soul to follow.
“Asia, NO—” Brock’s form flew at her, but he was too late.
Leni had lifted a hand toward the hole, and Asia reached out for her. Both of them were sucked inside, and the hole closed up.
“What the hell?” I yelled as I flew at the Gate’s wall to no avail. The hole wouldn’t reopen. Pain shattered through me as my soul felt Leni’s absence, and darkness began to cloud my vision. Brock and I both stood there, in too much shock to think straight. “What do we do?”
Brock didn’t answer.
“What the fuck do we do?” I yelled at him as I tried to push away the agony engulfing me. “Brock!”
He still stared at the Gate, which remained lit like a beacon in the water.
“Broderick!”
“I … I don’t know. Nothing like this—”
I didn’t hear the rest. Something flew out of the Gate and crashed into me, sending me soaring through the water until I skidded against the sandy bottom of the bay. Everything around me went dark, and all I could think was Dark Souls. Lakari. They’d passed through the Gate. I immediately went into fight mode.
“Dude!” Leni’s voice stopped me. “Were you seriously going to hit me?”
The light of our souls immediately swirled together, erasing the pain before I’d even registered that it had been her form the Gate had spit back out. I didn’t have to ask if she was okay. I could feel it.
“Damn, you gave me a scare,” I silently said to only her.
I glanced over to Brock, whose form was no longer discernable as just his. Asia had apparently returned, as well.
“What the hell?” he yelled a moment later, his form jumping away from hers. “You know better!”
Leni removed her light from mine. “It’s my fault. It was me. I … I felt something.”
Brock waved his fists in the air like a crazed old man. “You can’t be doing shit like that.”
I stepped forward. “Dude, don’t talk—”
The full force of his energy turned on me. “Do you know what that would do to us? To all of us, since Asia was pulled in, too? We’re lucky they came back. If they didn’t …”
“We know,” Leni said. “We’d all go Dark. I’m sorry, but I couldn’t help it. I felt a … a connection. Something—someone was in there.”
Brock’s form stiffened. “What the hell is someone doing in the Gate?”
“He wasn’t in the Gate,” Leni said. “I don’t think. It felt like somewhere … beyond. But he was reaching out for us, or for this world, or something.”
“Reaching out?” Brock repeated, sounding confused. “But why? Trying to talk to you?”
Asia shook her head. “No, it was more urgent than that. He had the desperation of a soul that’s been Separated.”
“I think … I think he thought we could help him,” Leni added. “But the Gate threw us back here before we could really know.”
Brock rubbed his head. “Well, it’s a good thing it did. Otherwise, we’d all be in his situation: Separated, desperate, and going Dark.”
Losing Leni had become my worst nightmare, and the thought of her soul going Dark scared the shit out of me. I melded more closely with her.
“At least you’re back,” I murmured to her. “Nothing else matters.”
Her soul gave mine a squeeze, but a tremor rippled through us. “A lot more matters, Jeric. Souls like that guy’s need to be helped. Even if we are part of the so-called Sacred Seven, we’re not the center of the universe.”
“Well, you’re the center of my universe. And I can’t imagine a universe without you. I will always make keeping us together my first priority, and everyone else can deal with it or fuck off.”
Chapter 2
My body wouldn’t stop trembling, although I was physically fine. After our shift at the Gate was over and the next group of Guardians arrived to relieve us, our essences returned to our perfectly safe bodies back in our room. No more words had been exchanged before then. Brock and Asia had some kind of private conversation going on between the two of them the rest of our time on duty, but Jeric and I had no idea what to think of what had happened. I had nothing to share with him except the extreme feeling of desperation that still haunted me.
Everything had happened so fast. The hole had widened, something or someone tugged at my heart with a crazy kind of need, and the next thing I knew, my soul was no longer with Jeric’s. I saw nothing but white blankness. I heard only deafening silence. Nothing touched me. We hadn’t entered the Space Between or the Beyond. And before anything registered more than this overwhelming emotion of despair, I was back with Jeric, who was about to blast me with a powerful punch of his energy.
Now, he enveloped me in his arms under the covers, trying to stop my quaking.
“Are you sure what you felt wasn’t from our souls being apart?” Jeric asked, his voice soft near my ear. “It certainly didn’t feel good.”
“I don’t know. I mean, yeah, that was part of the horrible feeling, but there was something more. Something not us. And not Asia, either. That guy …”
“You felt his presence. I get it. But the pain part—”
“The pain was his, too. Some of it anyway. It was similar to what I felt with your absence, but not the same. I don’t know how to describe it, Jeric. But I’m sure there’s something wrong with him.” I pulled back enough to look up at him, into his deep blue eyes. “Maybe it will happen again when we’re at the Gate, and we can find out who he is and what’s wrong with him.”
“We don’t have guard duty for several days.” One side of his mouth pulled down as I once again shared the feeling of absolute misery from inside the Gate.
“We have to do something,” I said.
He nodded. “I’ll see if anyone wants to trade shifts. Just promise me that you won’t leave me like that again.”
“I promise.”
Jeric had no luck over the next few days in finding anyone to give up their shifts for us. Guarding the Gate wasn’t normally exciting like it had been that day, but it also wasn’t normally so draining. In fact, spending time out of body and near the Gate usually energized and strengthened Guardians. We normally returned to our bodies feeling renewed and on a natural high. So although shifts could be kind of boring, depending on who you shared the shift with, nobody gave their turn up readily.
Like a lingering heaviness in my heart, the guy’s desperation haunted me.
After combat training a couple of days later, I caught Asia walking down the hall by herself. I hurried up to her, checked again to make sure no one was around, and whispered to her, “We have to do something. About the soul in the Gate.”
Her eyes cut sideways to me, and she sighed. “What can we do?”
“Have you been back to the Gate?”
She shook her head, her silvery-lilac hair swinging over her shoulders. “We’re on the same schedule as you.”
“What if the guy tries again, and we’re not there?”
Asia lifted her tiny shoulder in a shrug. “Then maybe someone else will help him.”
“I feel like he wants us, though. Like maybe we know him.” I gnawed on my lip for a moment, and then blurted out what
I’d been thinking. “Maybe he’s part of the Sacred Seven. Maybe he’s the Nathayden they were talking about.”
She spun on her combat-booted heel, stopping us in our tracks, and put a pale fist on her miniskirt-clad hip. She leaned toward me, her dark eyes in slits, and for such a pixie of a thing, she could be intimidating.
“You’re the leader, Leni. You tell me,” she snipped. “Aren’t you supposed to be the Light for the rest of us? They were right the other day. Trying to remember our pasts is the best thing any of us can do right now, especially you and Jeric, the oh-so-precious pair.”
“Excuse me?”
She froze with her mouth partly open, and then slowly closed it, along with her eyes. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have said that. Just having one of those days. Brock and I had a—never mind.” She paused again, seeming to collect herself, although her words still came out sharply. “Look, there’s nothing we can do for that guy. Not now. That could have been some kind of strange fluke, and there’s too much we don’t know, like what the guy’s problem even is. We don’t know if he’s on this world and near another Gate at, oh, say SeaTac or Tokyo, or if he’s on the other side of the damn universe. Unless and until we learn anything else, there’s nothing we can do.”
She spun again and stalked away, leaving me with my mouth hanging open. Were she and Brock having problems? Or did something else entirely have her panties in a bunch?
* * *
“Leni, you’re not letting your mind go,” Uncle Theo, er, I mean, Theo accused.
Calling him “uncle” had been a hard habit to break, but he wasn’t my real uncle, and I was still pissed at him for all the lies he’d told me and for how he’d abandoned me as soon as I’d met Jeric. He was really Theodethan, although he still preferred to be called Theo. He’d been my Guide in both this lifetime and last, when Jacey had known him as Pops. Although the “uncle” part often still slipped, I mostly wanted to call him “Douchebag,” especially when he kept things from me as he was doing right now. Which was why I couldn’t concentrate and “let my mind go” to drift back to past life cycles.